Allison Przylepa

Bewildering Stories biography

My name is Allison Przylepa. I'm 21 years old, and I live in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. My interest in the occult started young and developed into full-blown spirituality after I left home for college. I practice eclectic witchcraft. Even among others who perform spell work, I was, for a long time, anomalous; I didn't consult a patron deity.

Wiccans have the Triple Goddess and the Horned God, Norse worshippers have Odin and his pantheon ... hell, even some Christians have blended the Holy Trinity and its associated mythos with sorcery!

But not me. I'd tried invocations of deities, and none had appeared to me. Not Venus, or Loki, or Jesus, or Satan, or Bastet, or any of the others I'd heard success stories about on the magickal forums I frequent. It grew so hopeless that I'd come to the conclusion I was an atheist, a conclusion that didn't impede my magickal work whatsoever.

I simply reasoned that magic, being an undiscovered science, must therefore have overlap with existing (albeit new) sciences, like cosmology and quantum physics. After a year, my spirituality took on a sci-fi quality as I blended wisdom derived from my research therein into my rituals and spells.

I adopted the symbol of Baphomet - an obscure occult symbol first worshiped by the Knights' Templar as a wealth and fertility idol (allegedly), then repackaged and given a facelift as the Goat of Mendes by Elphias Levi's famous 19th-century drawing as a stand-in for the patron deity I lacked.

And then, during a lucid dream, I conferenced with Baphomet and was revealed more of his nature. It inspired me to write “A Lucid Dream” right after I woke up!